Customer Reviews

In Search of Time: The Science of a Curious Dimension

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Join Dan Falk for a bus tour of all the major tourist spots of science history where time played an important role. After exploring the history of time and its measurement, you'll enjoy the impressive views of all the big names (Newton, Einstein etc), and stop to chat with some contemporary players in the scientific fields that play with notions of time.

The book's weakness is the same as that of the science it surveys: we spend a lot of time exploring what we do with time as a concept (its epistemologies) but don't really explore what time really is (ontologically or phenomenologically). There are some brief and dismissive philosophical side-bars but it's clear the author is out of his depth when wrestling with the philosophy behind the science and the interpretation of the science. For example, he claims the measurability of time dilation is proof of time travel to the future, which it isn't - it's just slower travel through now; his juvenile single-sentence dismissal of "presentism" is indicative of the philosophical rigour.

None of this takes away from the enjoyable and highly readable text and if you don't want to go deep into time, this is a tour worth taking.

I must mention the deplorable state of the typesetting and layout, which frequently justifies single words over whole lines and in some places actually cuts off the footnotes mid sentence. Either the publisher's software is buggy or they don't know how to use it, which makes for a visually bumpy ride .

Way back in 1995 I read a fascinating book by Paul Davies called `About Time'. What makes the topic of time so interesting is that most people believe that they intuitively understand time and yet our perception and reality can be at odds. Unlike most things in nature science cannot stand outside of time and study it. We also have a very limited understanding of time based on that fact that we have no personal experiences with the very fast, the very distant and the very massive. This is why from our perspective Newtonian physics, which fundamentally misinterprets time, works perfectly fine in everyday life. My expectation for the book was to read more about the science of time possibly updated with research done within the past decade and a half. I don't think my expectation was unreasonable given the subtitle of the book, `The SCIENCE of a curious DIMENSION'. Note the prominence of the word `science'. To say I was disappointed would be a great understatement.

The first half of the book is about the history of timekeeping going back thousands of years. It's mildly interesting but certainly not why I purchased the book. About halfway through we finally get to Einstein's Theory of Relativity and the book briefly became intriguing although it never expands on ideas I've already read in many other books. In fact the second half of the book was sort of a primer on modern physics in general with the author touching on the big bang, black holes, dark matter, the smoothness of background radiation, grand unified theory, string theory (including m-branes), paradoxes of time travel and so on and so forth. What he doesn't do is ever delve into any one topic long enough to do anything more than scratch the surface. Quite frankly this book could have been written by a layman like me and why would I want to read a book I could have written. You can argue that the aforementioned topics are all related to time but you can also argue that paint drying is related to time but I don't want to read a book about drying paint.

In the end this book appears to be little more than a beginner's physics book along with some history of keeping time. For me it ended up being a waste of time (how ironic) and quite frankly was a chore to get through. Paul Davies' book delved far far deeper into the physics of time and was much more fascinating and better written. The author even refers back to Paul Davies book several times and inspired me to reread it. After just a few pages I could immediately recognize it as a far superior book. `In Search of Time' might be interesting to someone who hasn't spent much or any time reading popular science books but if you really want to get into the subject go with Davies.

In this book, Mr. Falk gives the reader a broad survey of current and ancient thinking about a question that has vexed humanity since the beginning: what is the nature of time? One of the difficulties with the question is that we don't even have a universally accepted definition of what time actually "is". For most of recorded history the topic of time was the domain of philosphy and physics. Mr. Falk walks the reader through the main philosophical theories about time and then shows how Isaac Newton decisively brought time into the grip of physical science. A couple of centuries later, Einstein overthrew some of our misconceptions about time and showed that time, like space, is not absolute but relative. Mr. Falk explains some of the key conclusions of Einstein's theories of special and general relativity in a way that a general reader can easily follow. In more recent times, Mr. Falk informs us, psychologists and cognitive scientists have begun tackling the subject of time as they systematically probe the nature of the human mind. By the way, the mind and the nature of consciousness is another 'little' subject that will continue to defy us for the forseable future. In addition to the philosophical and scientific theories about time, the book also covers cultural and sociological aspects of how humans deal with time. The language and diction of book are of high caliber.

Part everything you ever wanted to know, part up to the minute (no pun intended) survey of the latest science, this book is one of those easy to read, accessible 200 or so page scientific tomes that so seem to dominate science bookshelves.

But it's also a wonderful one volume treatment of its intended topic, right up there with About Time by Paul Davies and Hyperspace by Michio Kaku.

In brief this book treats the various arrows of time from the one we psychologically perceive right down to the one at the subatomic level.

Though Falk's treatment of the history of time and how we got the sixty minute hour is fascinating (thank the Babylonians he says), I think this book is at best discussing the cutting edge science.

And in terms of the cutting edge science it all boils down to one question: Is Julius Caesar still alive?

Though the gut answer is that Caesar is long dead such a view runs contrary to modern science which says that mathematics provides no justification for saying that any one time in time is more preferred than another.

In this way, Caesar's apparent death is merely "a stubbornly persistent illusion" as Einstein would put it. And as Newton puts it (who still remains a special case of Einstein) gravity reduces its grip as part of a straight forward inverse square calculation.

The big deal: If we were really living in a four dimensional world, gravity would reduces its grip as part of an inverse cube calculation...a mathematical proof the passage of time that seems so obvious to us is merely a human generated illusion.

In this way, our perception of the passage of time is like the deliciousness of steak or the pleasant smell of flowers...a user illusion put their (albeit for good evolutionary reasons) by our consciousness.

Whether you agree with all this or not (I personally think both Caesar and Elvis are dead) it still remains fascinating reading and an interesting take on a topic we all too easily can take for granted.

For those time fans who've read this book as well the previous Kaku and Davies entries, I would also suggest The End of Time by Julian Barbour, the Time Machine by H.G. Wells both mentioned by this author and for the ambitious the Fifth Edition of the Physical Basis for the Direction of Time by Dieter Zee.

Dan Falk, popular science writer, has tackled one of the most mysterious entities we know, time. Starting with the most rudimentary means humans developed to measure days, months, and years, he progresses to amazing modern clocks. His description of the world's oldest running clocks (in the cathedrals of Salisbury and Wells in England) motivated me to go and see them on a recent trip to the UK.

After describing how we measure time, Falk devotes most of his book to the concept of time itself. Many cultures view time differently from us in the West; we see it linearly and link it to past (memory) and the future (imagination). Isaac Newton saw time as a dependable ticking clock, resonating at a regular rate throughout the universe eternally, or as a river continuously flowing by at the same rate. Leibniz, on the other hand, viewed time as variable, related to the observer's experience. Falk traces the subsequent debates on the nature of time, and its relation to the second law of thermodynamics, which seems to indicate an "arrow of time."

Next he explains Einstein's contribution, showing time to be a dimension related to space, matter, and energy, and to be variable. He does a good job explaining special and general relativity to laymen (at least, as much as can be done). He then compares Einstein's idea to the newer discovery of quantum theory, which throws a wrench into relativity, at least on the micro scale.

Of course, any book on time must discuss the possibility of time travel. Falk's survey of the literature and ideas and fallacies of this popular thought is interesting and well presented. He even includes a great Calvin and Hobbs cartoon that states the matter perfectly! While noting that modern physics denies its possibility, he notes that there still is some uncertainty, leaving a tantalizing door open.

Falk then discusses the beginning of time at the Big Bang, and what might have happened "before" that. He does a good job surveying the way that scientists came to understand that time itself had a beginning. His philosophical meanderings at this point somewhat disappointed me, as he considered all options except that there actually is a Creator who began the universe, including space, matter, energy, and time.

The next chapter, on the end of the universe, graphically presents the bleak future of the universe--petering out "not with a bang, but with a whimper." This accurate picture produces a sort of despair among those who believe the universe is all there is or that we can experience, that there is no ultimate or lasting purpose to our existence. Once again, here the idea that God gives life and significance is not considered as a possibility.

Falk's book is fun to read and very educational. While I believe its naturalistic presuppositions limit its scope and conclusions, it still explains well the history and current state of our understanding of time.

In twelve fascinating chapters, the author discusses the vast subject of time. Each of these chapters contains a different perspective on this fascinating yet elusive topic. Roughly the first half of the book includes chapters on: humanity's early recognition of, and musings on, the passage of time, the development of the calendar, the invention of hours and minutes, as well as the cultural and psychological aspects of time. The second half of the book mainly deals with the physical, scientific and philosophical aspects of time, from Isaac Newton's perspective to the latest abstract thinking on the nature and existence of time. Here we find discussions on time's arrow, the beginning and the end of time as well as classical, relativistic and quantum mechanics. The writing style is clear, friendly, quite engaging and accessible to a wide readership. The author takes the time to explain any terms that may be unfamiliar to the casual reader but does not pull any punches when it comes to relaying the views of the various individuals, mainly scientists and philosophers, which he consulted in writing this book. Although anyone can enjoy it, this book would likely be appreciated the most by science buffs.

In Search of Time briefly, very briefly, discusses the various historical, philosophical, scientific, and cultural aspects of time by visiting the people, places and things with a prominent time-related role. As a cursory introduction, the book succeeds because it whets the appetite for such a profound subject by succinctly describing how mankind has struggled with measuring, using and understanding time. However, it falls flat when it stops describing and starts opining: the author does not have the philosophic know-how to adequately discuss the subtlety and depth of this topic. Also irksome are the occasional display of flabby jokes and the frequent quotation of authors without any citation of their books (e.g., a reference to Alfred Crosby's label of "quantitative revolution" on p. 64 is made without citing a book or article). Despite these flaws, this is an enjoyable ride.

This book presents a "history" of time, with a heavy focus on physics and how physicists throughout history have approached and tried to conceptualize and explain time. The author does an excellent job of presenting a wide variety of both contemporary and historical perceptions of time. I enjoyed reading this book because it provided some food for thought on how I understand and conceptualize time. I recommend it to anyone who finds the concept of time fascinating and wants to learn what others have to say about it.

This is an excellent book for regular people that have some interest in the subject of Time. The author covers several aspects involving Time, from historical evidence of when civilizations first started understanding and taking advantage of time, to the philosophical Time, to the latest scientific concepts and theories around Time.

The book is excellently written. The first part of the book takes us through the evolution of time in history and in different cultures/civilizations and is written in such a way that the reader is always excited to find out what the next page will tell us about Time. The second part of the book, more focused in the scientific aspect of Time, explains how Time has been dealt with in the major breakthroughs of science, from Newton to Einsten and Hawking. Having tried to read other science books and gotten lost along the technical concepts, the author did a very good job in shielding the reader from the deepness of such concepts and theories and explained them in a very accessible manner.

What is time? That is the central question of this book. The author goes after this question from several different angles.
Historical and modern, scientific and philosophical. Actually the book goes after a number of closely related questions. Not only
What is time, but how does it work, why do we preceive it the way we do, does it exist in reality or is it an invention of the
human mind, ect. If you are looking for definitive anwsers, as you probably expect, there are none as yet. But this book will
give you insights and much food for thought on these subjects.
The book is well written, interesting, and easy to understand.